comparing Lysacek with Plushenko is a laugh.
even with Plushenko's injury and had worst at that than compared to Evan, we was still in better contention

Lysacek has almost zero chance of even returning pulling out of SA and I am 100% sure he wont show up at Nationals unless he wants to get embarassed
, Plushenko even half ready will be contending for a medal especially in Team

[QUOTE=golden411;765393]Never got around to asking you before, IcyEdges:

- Don't understand how comments from Frank Carroll could be "hearsay." Surely Carroll has direct knowledge of Lysacek's status.
- And are you saying that you know more about Lysacek than Carroll does?

No Golden, I wasn't saying that what FRANK said was hearsay. I was saying that everyone was jumping to conclusions on what Phil was "reporting". All that Frank said was that he was concerned because the "clock is ticking and Evan needs a qualifying score" before Jan 27th, 2014 deadline.

Frank, as the top notch coach that he is, has all right to be concerned about Evan making a qual score. But seriously, people are taking something Phil tweets or writes and are using that as a tool to say...well...there goes Evan he's done, let's dismiss him! Did Frank say he's done? Did the Lysacek camp say it's done? No..therefore people, please stop reading into a simple common quote for this situation from Frank as anything more than a simple statement.

Public speculation is blowing this out of proportion. That's all I'm saying.

Yes. TSL said during their recent This and That that Evan won't know for sure until about the week before Skate America. However, in a move that has lifted my respect for him, he has apparently already told the alternate to be ready.

I didn't mean to dismiss Plushenko's age or injuries entirely! If the whole free skate design was about working around his injuries that is something I neglected. He never did any other kind of layout really when he competed under COP. The original comment was about "if Plushenko couldn't come back and win then certainly Lysacek couldn't" But the Plushenko program design was so bad in addition to previous injuries or even ones present at the time just not that bad.

Maybe I didn't quite express my thoughts quite clearly in my previous post. I am not saying that people should not criticize what flaws they see in Plushenko's programs. However, I do find it somewhat painful to see fans attribute (especially with such apparent certainty) the flaws they see to "idiocy"--without taking into account his physical conditions at the time, as if how he and his team in fact designed his program really "had little to do with", as you put it in the previous post, these conditions. Again, this is certainly not meant as any kind of personal criticism, but I'm afraid that this kind of statement strikes me as somewhat thoughtless. Please correct me if I read your post wrong, but when it is said that his program design "was so bad in addition to previous injuries" (my italics), I still get the sense that this is the assumption. And as for his injuries at the time being "just not that bad", I feel that it's much easier for a skating fan to say such words than for a skater to skate with them. This is what I meant by "taking him for granted", as if everything comes to him, physically and technically, for free.

And perhaps it is not a bad thing to recall that in 09/10, he did fairly well with his "idiocy unparalleled in the history of figure skating", in fact. One might even make a case that actually, he did unprecedentedly well for a male singles skater in his position, weak field or not. Would he have done better, i. e. won gold at Vancouver, had he designed his programs differently (assuming that it would be a design that he could have skated at the time, of course)? I read your previous post to mean that he should have not done the quad. In this post it's more about "layout". But either way, such a hypothetical statement cannot be proven or disproven. Nor can it offer any proof as to what was the reason he did not get the gold in Vancouver in reality. (I am not saying this as a Plushenko fan; it's a matter of logic.) But as long as we are speculating about hypotheticals, people are saying in this thread that the quad is again relevant. Perhaps it would be interesting to consider the possible factors that contributed to that change.

With the statement "he never did any kind other of layout really when he was competing under COP", I interpret "layout" to mean, at least in part, the distribution of jumps, in terms of the two halves of the program? If that is so, I'm afraid I'll also have to take somewhat of an exception to this particular statement. Just as a matter of fact, last season at RN, his jump layout (in this sense) was 4-4, and he said it was a "simplified version", with the more complex version having two quads and "70% of jumps in the second half". He had hoped to do the more complex version at Zagreb, but of course that did not happen due to him essentially missing an intervertebral disc by the time. I guess what I am trying to say is that there are physical efforts and expenditure of stamina in every aspect of a program, though they may not all be of the same level. And I don't think that fans necessarily have accurate ideas of what each type of technical element is costing him physically at any given time. So to say "he is idiotic not to have such-and-such a program layout" is not on the same level of unreasonableness as for instance "he is idiotic not to have jumped three quads and a quint", but to me, it is not really logical either.

In any case, in your previous post and mine, I believe the question was the quad itself. I am of the opinion that his program design, as they actually were and in its different aspects, was dependent on what he felt he could physically do at the time. However, I would like to suggest the possibility that if something had to be sacrificed, then perhaps Plushenko and his team felt that it should not be the quad, because of what they believe about its importance relative to other technical aspects of a program. (Again, since I am only a fan, I'm not going say that I know for certain that's what went through their minds. I'm only offering the possibility based on what I know of things he has consistently said and done through his career.) One can agree or disagree with such a decision, but for me, I do not find it so inexplicable to hold such principles that it can only be attributed to "idiocy". I don't know what else I can say about this.

Sorry, yet another Plushenko post in a thread about Evan. But maybe there is some indirect relevance, in that, well, yes, in general it is hard, and it is complicated, to return to top-level competitive figure skating after a prolonged absence, and it is especially so if one is trying to do it within a limited time, i. e. one season. To me, this seems like such an obvious statement that it hardly needs to be said. So while I myself am mainly emotionally invested in Plushenko, it does make me uncomfortable to see attributions of ulterior motives when Lysacek withdraws from a competition in his comeback (and the same holds for other skaters).

^ Great post (as was your previous one). Gmyers can answer for himself , but let me make this comment.

Gmyers’ biggest beef in the whole (figure skating) world is that the CoP rules during the 2006-2010 period de-emphasized the quad, making it possible for a wimpy quadless performance like Lysacek’s to win an Olympic gold medal, thus setting men’s figure skating back twenty years. Plushenko’s decission to man up and do what was essentially a pre-2006 jump layout was (sarcastically) “idiotic” because Plushenko could have won if he had just (shamefully) pimped the CoP instead.

...
Plushenko’s decission to man up and do what was essentially a pre-2006 jump layout was (sarcastically) “idiotic” because Plushenko could have won if he had just (shamefully) pimped the CoP instead.

Thank you (I can't find a blush smilie)

I guess one thing I want to mention is that I am not trying to say the quad and the "CoP layout" (meaning 3-5 jumps, more transitions, etc.) are intrinsically mutually exclusive. This is again just speculation, but I don't find it so unimaginable that Plushenko, during the 09/10 season, might have found it difficult to have both given his physical conditions, such as injuries, at the time and the fact that he's been out of condition for three years. And my feeling is that he made his decision based both upon physical matters and his principles. In the seasons after, we do see him trying to incorporate both (given his physical conditions, of course), and we see other skaters trying to incorporate both. Of course, this may lead to other issues about skating clean programs and about "art", but he's trying and others are trying, and perhaps it's a matter of finding a balance between the different aspects of skating within one's physical parameters.

Was much of a fuss made in 1994, when Alexei Urmanov won his OGM without a quad? That was six years after 1988, when Browning landed the first one in competition.

Not at all! It's not like Stojko did one either. 2010 came after quads were landed at the previous 3 Olympics by the mens champion! And just two years after a 10 year streak at the worlds of men winning with quads ended. In 1994 a quad wasn't considered as necessary like the triple axel! Some thought Olympic judges had moved the quad to the position of the triple axel! If you want to win the Olympics you do a quad like you do a triple axel! But the 2008 and 2009 worlds demonstrated that doing quads wasn't necessary and it was not like a triple axel! In fact if you messed up on a quad and underrotated it and landed you would get 1 point and if you fell no points so that is why 4 quads were attempted in the SP and 10 in the LP. So of course no fuss was made about a quad in 1994 and maybe a little would've been if Stojko did one. Because of injury he didn't do one in 1998 either but Kulik did and that started the streak of 3 Olympics in a row with men doing quads in their FS.

Maybe I didn't quite express my thoughts quite clearly in my previous post. I am not saying that people should not criticize what flaws they see in Plushenko's programs. However, I do find it somewhat painful to see fans attribute (especially with such apparent certainty) the flaws they see to "idiocy"--without taking into account his physical conditions at the time, as if how he and his team in fact designed his program really "had little to do with", as you put it in the previous post, these conditions. Again, this is certainly not meant as any kind of personal criticism, but I'm afraid that this kind of statement strikes me as somewhat thoughtless. Please correct me if I read your post wrong, but when it is said that his program design "was so bad in addition to previous injuries" (my italics), I still get the sense that this is the assumption. And as for his injuries at the time being "just not that bad", I feel that it's much easier for a skating fan to say such words than for a skater to skate with them. This is what I meant by "taking him for granted", as if everything comes to him, physically and technically, for free.

And perhaps it is not a bad thing to recall that in 09/10, he did fairly well with his "idiocy unparalleled in the history of figure skating", in fact. One might even make a case that actually, he did unprecedentedly well for a male singles skater in his position, weak field or not. Would he have done better, i. e. won gold at Vancouver, had he designed his programs differently (assuming that it would be a design that he could have skated at the time, of course)? I read your previous post to mean that he should have not done the quad. In this post it's more about "layout". But either way, such a hypothetical statement cannot be proven or disproven. Nor can it offer any proof as to what was the reason he did not get the gold in Vancouver in reality. (I am not saying this as a Plushenko fan; it's a matter of logic.) But as long as we are speculating about hypotheticals, people are saying in this thread that the quad is again relevant. Perhaps it would be interesting to consider the possible factors that contributed to that change.

With the statement "he never did any kind other of layout really when he was competing under COP", I interpret "layout" to mean, at least in part, the distribution of jumps, in terms of the two halves of the program? If that is so, I'm afraid I'll also have to take somewhat of an exception to this particular statement. Just as a matter of fact, last season at RN, his jump layout (in this sense) was 4-4, and he said it was a "simplified version", with the more complex version having two quads and "70% of jumps in the second half". He had hoped to do the more complex version at Zagreb, but of course that did not happen due to him essentially missing an intervertebral disc by the time. I guess what I am trying to say is that there are physical efforts and expenditure of stamina in every aspect of a program, though they may not all be of the same level. And I don't think that fans necessarily have accurate ideas of what each type of technical element is costing him physically at any given time. So to say "he is idiotic not to have such-and-such a program layout" is not on the same level of unreasonableness as for instance "he is idiotic not to have jumped three quads and a quint", but to me, it is not really logical either.

In any case, in your previous post and mine, I believe the question was the quad itself. I am of the opinion that his program design, as they actually were and in its different aspects, was dependent on what he felt he could physically do at the time. However, I would like to suggest the possibility that if something had to be sacrificed, then perhaps Plushenko and his team felt that it should not be the quad, because of what they believe about its importance relative to other technical aspects of a program. (Again, since I am only a fan, I'm not going say that I know for certain that's what went through their minds. I'm only offering the possibility based on what I know of things he has consistently said and done through his career.) One can agree or disagree with such a decision, but for me, I do not find it so inexplicable to hold such principles that it can only be attributed to "idiocy". I don't know what else I can say about this.

Sorry, yet another Plushenko post in a thread about Evan. But maybe there is some indirect relevance, in that, well, yes, in general it is hard, and it is complicated, to return to top-level competitive figure skating after a prolonged absence, and it is especially so if one is trying to do it within a limited time, i. e. one season. To me, this seems like such an obvious statement that it hardly needs to be said. So while I myself am mainly emotionally invested in Plushenko, it does make me uncomfortable to see attributions of ulterior motives when Lysacek withdraws from a competition in his comeback (and the same holds for other skaters).

Originally Posted by Mathman

^ Great post (as was your previous one). Gmyers can answer for himself , but let me make this comment.

Gmyers’ biggest beef in the whole (figure skating) world is that the CoP rules during the 2006-2010 period de-emphasized the quad, making it possible for a wimpy quadless performance like Lysacek’s to win an Olympic gold medal, thus setting men’s figure skating back twenty years. Plushenko’s decission to man up and do what was essentially a pre-2006 jump layout was (sarcastically) “idiotic” because Plushenko could have won if he had just (shamefully) pimped the CoP instead.

Mathman is right Whitebamboo! And when I say layout I do mean distribution of jumps! I also thought I said Pre-Vancouver! Of course post Vancouver there has been more attempt at distributing jumps more equally between first and second halves of the program. Except at Japan Open 2012 which had two quads and was 6/2 in jump distribution. But I have said if Plushenko looked at 2008 and 2009 worlds in terms of those skaters maximizing points instead of leaving out points by not doing a quad then Vancouver could've been radically different! Plushenkos injuries are well documented but honestly I did not connect the "front loading" of jumps with minimizing possible reinjury! It was just not depicted that way at all in the press nor did he ever say it or Mishin for that matter! THough it may be a common sense cause! It was just depicted as old 6.0 system thinking and not knowing about the bonus possibilities in the second half. Or not caring about them! And Its true having a different layout of jumps than 90% of the men worked really well up until the Olympics.